[Dspace-general] Scope of DSpace (Was: Dublin Core Registry question)

[Richard Jones]

Hi Folks,

I've CC'd this to dspace-tech, as it seems appropriate for there also

> Rather than trying to make decisions, or suggest decisions be made by
> the DSpace community, might I suggest a path? Modularization. As much
> as is reasonable, DSpace features should be modularized, so that there
> is a core DSpace engine, with almost all services plug-and-play. In
> this way it permits the community to deliberately fragment into
> interest areas, building the modular tools the subcommunities are
> interested in, and allowing implementors to create installations that
> suit their needs without overburdening them with an enormously complex
> base package. E.g., so if somebody doesn't need OAI features, or they
> want a local system rather than an online one, they choose the modules
> they need (or there is an install system to permit them to do so easily).

Hopefully the AddOn Mech should make this process easier, and if you are
interested in helping out or having a look at it at least, you could
start with:

http://wiki.dspace.org/AddOnMechanism

Anyway, I have a crazy idea with regard to modularising the DSpace code
base.  It's maybe a bit extreme in terms of organisation, but here it
is:  Would it be sensible/useful to organise at some point a "Developer
Camp", where those of us who wanted to could get together for anything
up to a week at a host institution with a pile of computers and as much
of our own code as we want to bring and actually physically start to
pull the codebase appart into a series of modules?  It may be
unworkable, but the way I see it is that this sort of effort is quite
large, and requires some commitment from those undertaking it.  Since we
all have day jobs I worry that the impetus/resources to actually make a
start is lacking.  A blitz /may/ overcome that.  Or we might end up with
a pile of broken code ;)

Just a thought.

Cheers,

-- 
Richard
-------
Richard Jones                    |
Overingeniør                     | Senior Engineer
Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen | University of Bergen Library

e: richard.jones at ub.uib.no
t: +47 55 58 25 37

BORA: http://bora.uib.no/